He dunno if it’s true
Trump breaking yet more new ground in Repulsion Farm:
Not long after Donald Trump took to the stage at a rally in Hershey, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday night, the president launched into one of his biggest crowd-pleasers: pillorying the “deep state,” particularly by performing fan-fic-style dialogue between the “FBI lovers” Lisa Page and Peter Strzok.
It’s a routine that he’s been honing on the re-election campaign trail for months, perhaps most famously during an October campaign event in Minneapolis, where he appeared to make orgasmic, panting noises—much to the audience’s delight—while doing a mock-dialogue between the two “lovers” about how much they “love” each other and hate that “son of a bitch” Trump.
And that, in turn, is what caused Lisa Page to go public, and to file suit against the DoJ people who, contrary to regulations, gave the Page-Strzok texts to journalists at a secret meeting in the dead of night. Trump is using illegitimately-released private communications to whip up hatred against Page and Strzok, both of whose careers have already been trashed thanks to him.
And on Tuesday night, the president went a step further, claiming he’d “heard” gossip about previously unknown relationship woes between the two former FBI employees—though Trump conceded he could just be spreading pure disinformation.
“So FBI lawyer Lisa Page was so in love she didn’t know what the hell was happening,” Trump blared. “Texted the head of counterintelligence Peter Strzok, likewise so in love he couldn’t see straight! This poor guy. Did I hear he needed a restraining order after this whole thing to keep him away from Lisa? That’s what I heard. I don’t know if it’s true. The fake news will never report it, but it could be true.”
George Conway pointed out on Twitter that Strzok could sue him for defamation for that, all the more easily since he (Trump) admitted he doesn’t know if it’s true.
After pointing out the reporters gathered in the back so the audience could loudly boo them, the president continued to make the baseless claim that a restraining order was put in place. At the same time, Trump gave a contorted explanation of the alleged restraining order.
“Now that’s what I heard, I don’t know,” he added. “I mean, who could believe a thing like that? No, I heard Peter Strzok needed a restraining order to keep him away from his once lover. Lisa, I hope you miss him. Lisa, he will never be the same.”
Can we get a restraining order against Trump?
Behold the festering garbage pile of a human:
Conway on the slander case:
Since “I heard” is translation for “Here’s some shit I just made up”, the only place he heard it was in the cavernous space inside his skull. But now that he’s said it, there will be a (much too large) number of people who will believe it’s true because he said it. There’s plenty of truth reported that he doesn’t like, but his his not liking it makes it “fake.” Why can’t he say untrue things he does like and have them taken as truth? It only seems fair (and balanced). In fact, almost kingly.
There’s an old concept in libel law called the “libel-proof plaintiff.” The idea is that some people’s reputation is so lousy already that they can’t be defamed. (It’s more an abstract discussion point that an actual legal doctrine that gets applied in real life.)
Trump may be the first “libel-proof defendant.” By which I mean that he is such a notorious bullshitter that no reasonable listener ever takes anything he says as a serious factual claim.
Popehat has a Twitter thread up explaining the problems with a defamation claim. I think the biggest problem would be showing actual loss of reputation: is there anybody who actually thinks less of Strzok because of this? Trump’s fanboys already thought he was a traitorous seditious scumbag blah blah blah; conversely, would anyone who wasn’t a Trump fanboy actually take this seriously?
Page’s suit may be a different story, because she’s relying on a privacy claim.
More on Trump’s rally.
Far from the worst thing he said, but somehow emblematic of his twisted, desiccated mind:
This is our president*.
*With apologies to the non-US crowd.
What bad luck for Trump that, when he fired James Comey, he was fooled into picking another “bad” FBI director. Just like he picked a “bad” first Secretary of State, a “bad” first Attorney General….
TBF, it’s Trump, so “I don’t know” is pretty much assumed.